From Australia’s Jewish past

Eva Isaacs – psychologist and educationalist

Eva Indyk was born in 1910 in Poland to Saul and Phyllis Indyk.

She was the eldest of six children of an orthodox family whose father believed strongly in education and was distressed at the bans preventing Jewish children from attending university in Poland.  At some stage, the family came to Australia and settled in Sydney.  She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Sydney. She began teaching languages at Ascham School, Edgecliff, combining this with interpreting for the Australian Army censorship section during the war, on loan to the United States Army.  A ten-year break from teaching followed her marriage to Maurice Isaacs, a lawyer. They had three children.  Later, she undertook postgraduate studies in psychology at the University of Sydney and later a Diploma of Education from the University of New England, Armidale.

From 1955 to 1961, she taught Latin at Wenona School, a private girls’ school in North Sydney.  In 1963, she worked as a district school counsellor with the New South Wales Department of Education.  This appointment took her to work in inner-city schools that had a high proportion of immigrant children, the majority of whom were Greek.  During this period, she found that the test used by the Department of Education, established in the mid-1930s, was still in use and certainly not appropriate for achieving the right results, nor was it suitable for the children. Eva’s findings and recommendations led to the rationalisation of school placement tests.  One primary concern was that all education programs were directed towards adults, the theory being that children absorbed English-language and Australian way-of-life concepts at school.  In trying to have extra English education for immigrants included in schools, she wrote to members of Parliament and the Premier, pointing out that attention was not being paid to the children’s family backgrounds and traditions.  She was the first – and for a long time the only – specialist counsellor for immigrant children in New South Wales and became a member of the Standing Committee for Migrant Education.  She earned her MA in 1967, and the committee recommended establishing the Child Migrant Education Section in Chippendale.

Eva’s special interest remained with the Greek children; her work brought her into contact with more than 2,000 children.  Her concern was why they were underachieving on their tests, so she devoted her MA thesis to finding the answer.  She spent many hours visiting families in their homes. She even learned Greek through the University of Sydney Extension Board so that she could talk to the parents as well as the children and learn more about their lifestyles and attitudes to matters such as the school system, mixing with Australians at school or at work, and their out-of-school social life.  This showed her how involved the children were in these families, having jobs to do, whilst their homes were generally filled with many family members; they were expected to manage their homework amid the noise and interruptions without the luxury of having their own space.  In many of the families she visited, she was the first non-Greek to visit their homes.

She published papers and books relating to Greek Children in Sydney.  In one of her book introductions, she wrote about the importance of the family being included in decisions such as house sales and finance, with the children often reading advertisements for car and house sales in English newspapers to their parents, whilst the parents continued to buy Greek newspapers for news.  In quoting Greek parents in her book, Eva made the telling point that most teachers do not understand, or try to understand, the problems and cultural differences faced by Australian children from non-English-speaking backgrounds. Through her work with the families, what was so important was the role of the Greek Church in keeping traditions and culture alive, or of the Greek attitude to marriage and the strictness of parents about such issues as their children’s, especially girls’, friends, and outings, even school functions attended by most of the other pupils.

Through her various positions as a school counsellor for the Department of Education, Eva was able to advise on ways to help children from non-English-speaking backgrounds assimilate into Australian life.  Among her recommendations were the elimination of the words ‘ethnic’ and ‘migrant’, which she considered to be psychologically hostile.  She had always been interested in the word ‘’ethnic’’ and because of this, her PhD thesis was a dissertation on ethnicity.  She said, ‘My theory was that the word ‘ethnic’ implied some hostility – because no country regards its citizens as ethnic. I also fought against the word ‘migrant’ – and called them immigrants or people from non-English speaking backgrounds.’’

She was commissioned by multicultural television to write a historically and sociologically oriented profile of the Greek community as a source of archival material.  Eva spent much of her time writing papers on education, sociology, and immigration issues for publication or presentation at professional conferences and seminars.  Yes, despite all her research and her writing and the interest they generated, what she really enjoyed was the face-to-face counselling at schools.

Eva was never idle; she was a member of teachers’, women graduates’, psychologists’, and writers’ organisations as well as a Justice of the Peace.  Through the 1970s until 1983, Eva served on the Council of Governors of the Wenona School and was also a member of the Mitchell College of Advanced Education Council from 1980 to 1982.  Many of her pupils at Wenona claimed she made ‘a dead language come alive’ and many kept in touch with her for years after.  ‘Her warmth, vitality and loyalty never forgot to serve – family, friends, students and the wider community’.

Eva died suddenly on 9th October 1982.  She was a woman of many cultural interests, an art and artefact collector who liked to embroider, cook, and grow her own herbs and vegetables. She loved music, opera, theatre, and films and used to produce plays for the German Department when she was at university, and Latin plays when she was teaching at Wenona.  She travelled widely throughout Europe, spending several weeks in one country or city to absorb the arts scene.  Whilst it sounds as though Eva was a high-powered woman, she was gentle, a devoted wife and mother, and a grandmother of four.

Unpublished at the time of her death was a monograph written in 1981-82, dealing with Greeks in the professions – in other words, immigrants who have overcome all the problems and enjoy a good standard of living and quality of life.

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:

National Library of Australia, UNSworks, State Library of Victoria, Beginning with Esther – Lysbeth Cohen

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